The body of a newborn baby was found inside a coin locker on Tuesday morning near JR Okubo Station in Shinjuku Ward. Police said it was a boy and appeared to have been dead for about 10 days.
According to police investigations, an employee of the company that manages the coin locker found the body at 10:40 a.m. because the locker, which is installed on the street about 200 meters from JR Okubo Station, had been used for five days without payment. The body was inside a paper bag and still had its umbilical cord.
© Japan Today
60 Comments
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CavemanLawyer
Yes, there are worse things than abortion.
Sick and sad and so preventable this is.
--Cirroc
darksamurai
Really Sick! tragic!
memyselfI
Scary !!!!!! The young woman AGE 13-30 probably performed the pregnancy in the bathroom !!! 10 days in a coin locker SCARY !!!!!
Damax6
geeezzzzzzzzzzzzzzus , what is wrong here????? now that is JUST SICK!!!!!!!!
serindipity
So, do you still think the baby hatches are a bad idea? They should be everywhere! Train stations, convenience stores, family restaurants, schools and anywhere else that people could drop their babies off. It's a sad fact there are so many irresponsible people within this society, but these littlies deserve a chance and don't deserve to be cast away like an unwanted toy. SAD!
Blue_Tiger
Once again, the god of "self" has claimed another sacrifice. And how, serindipity, did the baby hatch help this little one? I hope they find who did it and lock him/her/both up for the rest of their lives....
furuigakko
Very sad indeed, is there a sex ed curriculum in J schools? Or even classes on contraception?
serindipity
Hey! Blue Tiger! The 'one-and-only' baby hatch is in bloody Kyushu!
mikihouse
have no words to describe this monstrousity...Problem is there are no support system in Japan for desperate girls in need of help.
Blue_Tiger
Serindipity - Hospitals are everywhere....could not the person who stuffed this baby in a bag, and into a locker not taken this baby anonymously to a hospital? Baby Hatch availability is irrelevent....
A tragic case, and the perso nor people who did it ought to be found, tried, and jailed for a good long time....
Spidey
Whether this happened in Japan or any other country is completely irrelevant. We're dealing with primal forces here folks. Society is not to be blamed. Even if there were "hatches" at every corner store, this would still happen. It's rare but it falls within normal human behavior. Like it or not.
S
beavis
Typical responses to an all too frequent occurrence. Barring this winning statement that is;
KissMint
Yes, why only one and all the way down in Kyushu??
TheNewZen
Sad news. RIP little one.
gogogo
The baby hatch really looks like a good idea now. Poor kid never had a chance.
TheNewZen
KissMint.
The baby-hatch is run by a religious(catholic methinks) hospital and is a private venture.
But I agree we need more. Baby-Hatches been around for centuries and exist in many countries. Even countries where they are forbidden(USA, etc) they have so called "Safe Haven" laws where mothers can leave their kids.
tokyokitty
More baby hatches pls...
tokyokitty
RIP little angel :(
cleo
Are we sure this wasn't a still-birth? If so, no number of baby hatches would have helped.
Either way, RIP, little one.
smithinjapan
Anyone read Murakami's book "Coil Locker Babies"? (That's Murakami Ryu, not Murakami Haruki). Anyway, touches VERY slightly on this subject.
And yet more proof that baby hatches would be beneficial EVERY WHERE!
TheNewZen
Might have been a still-born or another teen giving birth and abandoning the baby.
A few years back there was another sick case, where a station-attendant heard mewing from a coin-locker, they found a bay inside. The parents decided they wanted a romantic dinner just the two of them and thus placed the baby in the locker for the duration.
serindipity
Once again, I have to disagree. The main point of a baby hatch is being able to use it anonymously, but walking into a hospital to drop off a baby has no anonymity what-so-ever. And, stuff the baby into a bag??? C'mon, be real!
I agree this kind of thing will happen with or without baby hatches being available, but put in this situation I'm sure many parents of unwanted children would like to know they have a choice besides abandoning their baby in a train station locker.
bushlover
If stillborn it's another abandoning a body charge. If it were alive, which is hard to determine, it would be murder. DNA should track down the mother. Go take some from recent preggers and mathch it up.
Kapuna
I hope there is surveillance video of this area. The person who did this is in dire need of help.
GW
one thing people are forgetting, that is a whole lot of support services wud be needed for more baby hatches & Jpn just isnt very good at this kind of thing, I mean what wud they do with all the babies, it wud be taihen
adaydream
This ios a sad story. I remember hearing about the Baby-Hatches. I wish the mother had thought past panic. My prayers for the innocent ones. < :-)
serindipity
Yeah, it's sad and true that to introduce baby hatches on a large scale would be impossible in Japan, however, with the large amount of recent baby deaths due to dis-functional and desperate parents there certainly is a need for better support. It sickens me to see this kind of thing happening so often. I know it happens in other parts of the world too, but not with the regularity and random obscurity that it seems to happen here. - kicked to death, starved to death, shaken to death for crying, locked under the seat of a scooter while ma and pa are playing pachinco and now, dumped in a train locker, just to name a few. Just sickening!
gerriburn
I hope they'd find the irresponsible parents asap.. Japan do have DNA database right?
bongoboy
Maybe the mother did it because couldn't afford to kill the baby legally through abortion.
bobgeorge
I hate to say it, but the baby was spared a terrible life. If he had grown up with a mother like that, just think of what he may have turned into. Japan, & the world for that matter, doesn't need more people like her! F'n C!
memyselfI
Imagine this girl putting 300 yen in locker and turning the key. Then she just walked away !!!!!!! SCARYYYYYY !!!!!!
noborito
gerriburn, you have got to be kidding me.
SushiSake3
Unbelievably sick. :-(
mayabe
Oh my oh my.. baby's life is just 300 yen? atleast the person should give the baby proper burial.
Dennis Bauer
I agree with Bleu Tiger who cares about anominity? it is about making sure the baby will be cared for. This girl just wanted "the problem" to go away.
Sometimes i wish that angry ghost would exit and that the mother would be haunted by her baby for all eternity!
R.I.P -__-
franz75
Sad but we don't know anything about the mother. Maybe you heard about pregnancy denial. Some women refuse to believe to be pregnant and finally even ignore they are pregnant until the birth (in a station or close to it for example). This is sick and it could be helped.
boobug
"Sad but we don't know anything about the mother."
Sure we do, she's a sicko that needs to be put behind bars or in a mental institution. Please, spare me the bleeding liberal heart !
franz75
boobug: you are right, putting behind bars, hanging her, putting a mental institution will help (you at least). Should better find why she did it.
USNinJapan2
You think this is bad. Haven't seen it here but saw a story on the TV news today about a woman somewhere in Japan who was arrested recently for hiding the body of her dead newborn infant which she'd killed after giving birth. Turns out that she'd had four other babies previously (all without anyone realizing that she was ever pregnant) and had disposed of their bodies too. I think two of the bodies were evidently found in the garage but the other three had been taken out long ago as household garbage. Her reason for doing this was that she didn't think the guy she was in love with would leave her if he found out she was pregnant.
n3312
Baby hatches would work if and only if the mother cared about what happens to the baby - even just a little. If they only thought of themselves (like one of the posts before this), no amount of baby hatches would help.
dammit
Poor little babe. I just hope that he died of natural and unpreventable causes before he was dumped. Not likely I know, but I can only hope. Even if he was already dead I don't understand how someone could dump their own baby's body, or someone else's baby's body for that matter.
Regarding some of the earlier posts, who says that the mother was the person who dumped the baby? How do you even know that she's not been held prisoner by some weirdo, who decided to dump and kill the child of his rape? How do you know that she didn't die in a bungled home birth, and her boyfriend or whatever didn't panic and dump the baby? I'm not saying that she isn't responsible, but why are some of you so aggressive at assuming she's sick and disgusting, capable of either murdering her baby and dumping him or dumping him and leaving him to die? The fact is that we know very little. When they prove the mother dumped him, THEN pounce on her!
Where I come from it's shamefully traditional to dump unwanted babies in a moses basket on someone's doorstep, although they've been dumped everywhere from dustbins to under a gorsebush on top of a hill where people very rarely go, wrapped in anything from a plastic bag to an old t-shirt. Sometimes they die, other times they're found and saved, (if they were alive when they were dumped that is.)
USNinJapan2, I'm afraid you'll find that there are secret hoards of dead babies being discovered all over the world, not just in Japan. Even in the US. I think the last one I heard of was in Germany? Or somewhere nearby anyway.
seggahme
i thought, lockers are inspected more often
Sarge
I agree with SushiSake3.
rurika
Poor baby. Results of autopsies on babies are more difficult to interpret than that of adults and older children. We may never know if he was stillborn or murdered. I assume he wasn't left to die in the locker, someone would have heard him crying.
There are girls and women all over the world, even well-educated professional women, who hide their pregnancies. Killing or hiding the baby is their way of pretending the pregnancy never happened. They have a different mindset from women who leave a baby on a doorstep or outside a church. They wouldn't use a baby hatch because that would mean acknowledging they were ever pregnant.
chibaman
I agree with Sarge, but disagree with SushiSake3.
Betting
But this kind of crime has been fairly common in Japan over the ages. I believe that in the 80s as well, there were a whole of similar events with babies being left in various public places such as these coin lockers.
Sarge
chibaman - That's not possible. If you agree with me here, you have to agree with Sushi.
chibaman
I have to do no such thing.
KitsuneYoukai
Now this is sick and sad. Who in their right mind would do something like this. With the right investigation you can always find out who was the person who did this; I hope they try.
ichinensei
I dont understand why people have to do this. If the baby was alive, leave it outside a koban or hospital or something and run off.(assuming she doesnt want it) WHy leave it in a locker? Chances are, this person went out of the way to put it there.
ColAmerica
I agree with Sarge.
chibaman
I agree with ColAmerica, and SushiSake3, but not Sarge.
Hughgarse
unbelievable...
Elbuda Mexicano
Whoever put this poor little baby int he coin locker to die is one sick bastard! I hope they find the person or persons and give them a good old horse whippin! Then lock them up for the rest of their miserable lives!
1001tlc
What kind of mother or person could be doing this cold blood murder????? I'm sure that low-life sick woman or girl is somewhere again wearing her stupid cheap high-heel smiling to every man she fancied and start all-over again as if nothing had happened. Guys out there be careful! She could be one of your NANPA. SCARY.....just to imagine. Irresistible sex.
A PRAYER TO THE LITTLE ONE...RIP.
Schutzstaffel
There must be CCTV cameras in operation near this site. If it is found to be murder, and the person is sane, then they should be executed promptly to deter others.
These crimes must be stopped, the underclass must be removed to stop these crimes!
badge123
"found at a train station" headline, article, found "near", being at and being near are two different things. I think the coin lockers found at train stations are checked more often (eg after one or two days), some that are inside the gates I think are checked everynight, not sure, but I do see the guards sometimes checking each at night. Anycase since it was not at the station itself, there might not be any cameras out there to catch whats up.
Molenir
Like others, this crime could have been prevented with education, and a lot more of those "horrible" baby hatches that everyone hates. All I can say is, its tragic that one mother decided it would be better to kill her child, then to give it a chance at life.
Orangeporange
Are there even any baby hatches in Tokyo? Think of all the families waiting to adopt here. This baby could have had a chance.
pizzaboy
Think of the smell...